Hero Treats Baton Rouge Flood Victims to 108 Pounds of Brisket

The meat took seven hours to prepare, and just 20 minutes to eat.

Melissa Kravitz

Image via Flickr

Over the weekend, an "unprecedented" and "historic" flood ripped through more than 40,000 homes in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, leaving at least six people dead. And while roughly 20,000 additional people have been rescued—with some 8,000 currently living in shelters throughout the area—one man from across the Mississippi River is doing his part to help in the relief effort with food.

Along with his wife and daughter, Christian Dornhorst purchased all of the brisket at a local Sam's Club on Monday morning, spending over $850 on 108 pounds of meat.

“The Lord put this in my heart at 7 in the morning, when I was at work,” Dornhorst told the Washington Post this week. An employee at Dow Chemical, Dornhorst's boss had let him off for the day so he could help the displaced families in Baton Rouge. “By 9, I had the food at Sam’s Club. By 11, my wife had seasoned it up."

“The Lord blessed us with all of these things,” he added. “There are enough people suffering here that I can do this to help.”

Dornhorst attached a smoker to his truck and eventually parked at Celtic Media Centre—the Baton Rouge film studio where movies like The Fantastic Four and Twilight had been filmed—which had been converted into a shelter for thousands of newly homeless residents. And though Dornhorst fired up the smoker a little after noon, taking nearly seven hours to cook the brisket, all 108 pounds of meat were devoured in just 20 minutes.

Dornhorst is a veteran, and while he cooked outside Celtic Media Centre he donned a Wounded Warriors t-shirt with the words "The only casualty is being forgotten" emblazoned across the front. He's hoping to take another day off from work so he can continue to help the victims of the flood, and brought his daughter with him so she could learn a valuable lesson in empathy.

"I brought my 4-year-old so she could see what it’s like when you don’t have a bed,” he said.

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